


if i'm the dynamite

by halfwheeze



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 616!Tony, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Matchmaker, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Disabled Character, Earth 616 Elements, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gift Fic, M/M, Matchmaker AU, Multi, Tony is Iron Man, Veterans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21854845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: Bucky Barnes is one on a team of five matchmakers, just a guy who does his job, really. But, when it comes time to matchmake Tony Stark, how will things be different for Bucky? Will he get too attached?
Relationships: Clint Barton/Maria Hill, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Sam Wilson, Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71
Collections: 2019 WinterIron_Holiday_Exchange





	if i'm the dynamite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanotherpipedream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherpipedream/gifts).



> Hope you like this, Summer!!

“Newest one is in, and he’s trying to buy his way to the top of the waitlist,” Maria announces as she throws the newest information files onto the table. She keeps them organized like some kind of military unit, even if what they do shouldn’t feel nearly as important as the military background all of them come from. Bucky pulls a file from the pile and flicks it open, raising his eyebrows at the photo he sees: Tony Stark. 

He knows Tony Stark. Of course he knows Tony Stark - pretty much everyone in New York knows Tony Stark. He’s the friend of a friend of a friend, and Bucky’s met him probably exactly once and very briefly, but they’ve met. He rarely, if ever, gets people sliding across the round table that he recognises at all. Well, besides celebrities, which Tony Stark technically is, he supposes. He’s a tech exec with a company that makes more money in an hour than Bucky will ever see in his life, but that’s alright. They’re comfortable with the company money they’ve got goin’, and they can even afford Stevie’s medical bills now. No matter how much they like to keep it cool, he knows that Sam and Nat are relieved about  _ that.  _

“Stark? Isn’t he a playboy or something?” Clint says, searching his own folder with skeptical eyes. Natasha is scanning through her’s as well, though her face shows nothing. Sam and Steve are not so delicate, open expressions showing their dubious thoughts on the matter. Bucky tries to be a little more open minded about it, even if he’s usually the one that’s skeptical about the clients of their services. 

He has a good feeling about this one, sue him. 

“So how are we splitting the work this time?” Bucky asks, setting them on task. They all have usual assigned jobs, but sometimes they change based on clientele. Natasha is the investigator, slipping into the life of the client and finding out everything she needs to know. She’ll befriend the nominator, because they don’t take clients without some sort of sponsor. Clint usually teaches the client how to cook a meal, how to host, and how to keep things relaxed for a home date. Sam makes sure that someone is ready for a relationship at all, seeing as that’s a big risk they take, and his psychology degree makes it a lot easier to tell. Maria is the ultimate picker, and Steve makes sure they don’t go too far. Before Steve started managing them in his way, they may have gone a little overboard. 

Bucky is the flirt. He puts their clients in real life situations to figure out how comfortable they are with other people, and to make them more comfortable if that answer is  _ not very.  _ But, they’ve got a playboy this time. Who knows if Bucky can even be of any help in that department? 

“Usual split? I think we all have our work cut out for us,” Sam proposes, reading over the  _ background  _ section of the packet with gusto. It’s the most important to Sam’s job, after all. Bucky shrugs. 

“Usual split,” he agrees when no one argues. 

James Rhodes greets them in the lobby of an expensive building when they arrive. He’s the nominator, the one that Natasha has to talk to first. He’ll give recommendations for who they should set Stark up with, though his word won’t be a hard limitation. In fact, he might even be who they’ll set Tony up with. That’s happened a couple of times, though it’s quite rare; usually the nominator is already in a relationship. 

“James Rhodes, but Tony calls me Rhodey, and he will not respect you if you call me anything else,” James Rhodes introduces himself with a smile, his hand held out to Maria before anyone else. That’s probably for the best, being as Maria outranks all of them by sheer meanness. She’s earned it. 

“Maria Hill. Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson,” Maria introduces with gestures. Each of them gives their own recognition: Bucky’s jaunty salute, Natasha’s tight nod, Clint’s wave, Steve’s smile and Sam’s casual regard of Rhodey’s features. Oh, Bucky will definitely be giving Sam shit about  _ that  _ later. Flirting with a mark is one thing (one thing that they do not do because it’s inappropriate,  _ Clint),  _ but flirting with a nominator? I mean, hey. If he’s single. It’s almost something to be proud of Sam for, if he actually does anything about it. 

“Tony is upstairs if you guys want to go ahead and meet him. JARVIS will take you guys where you need to go,” Rhodes points them toward the elevator. Maria nods, guiding their troupe across the lobby with military precision, ignoring the looks that workers of the building give them. Natasha stays behind. 

“I would actually like to speak to  _ you,  _ Mister Rhodes,” he hears Nat begin before the elevator closes, laying on the charm thick for whatever reason. She probably knows way more about the existing conditions than Bucky can even begin to, even if they were all given the same folder to begin on. 

“Sir is in the penthouse, Miss Hill. You are going to meet him, I presume?” a British accent asks from the ceiling, making all but Maria jump with the suddenness. She quirks just the barest smile, which lets Bucky know that she knew all about the sudden voice, and just chose not to put it in the file. 

“That would be great, JARVIS, thank you,” Maria acknowledges in return. 

“What the fuck was that?” Sam asks, looking at the ceiling as if it has done something to personally offend him. 

“I am JARVIS, an artificial intelligence module invented by Tony Stark to control the ins and outs of his property and personal interactions,” JARVIS explains itself - himself? - readily. Sam makes a face that is reluctantly impressed, just nodding before seeming to accept it. Bucky follows his lead, seeing as there’s not much that they can do to correct their lack of understanding at this point. 

“What do you think about us setting Tony up, JARVIS?” Bucky asks the ceiling, shrugging a shoulder when Sam and Steve give him a weird look. If the AI controls all of the ins and outs of Stark’s personal interactions, JARVIS has to know best about how to set him up, right? It makes sense to ask. 

“Sir has been lonely of late, but I believe that has more to do with his recent acquirement of a body guard than it has to do with his own personal development,” JARVIS answers, somehow sounding somewhat reluctant. The bodyguard he’s talking about is the Iron Man, an advent that has been used in the two years since Stark was kidnapped in the Afghani desert. Bucky nods his assent and thanks JARVIS quietly, standing at parade rest for the rest of the elevator ride. Sam asks JARVIS more innocuous questions, things that are related to Stark and things that aren’t, but Bucky is already formulating a plan of attack in his mind. For a playboy like Stark, flirtation won’t be hard to teach. 

It will be intimacy that holds more difficulty for a man like him. 

As raw and open as Stark has been on the press, there has never been a soft side of him shown to anyone, sans children's events that Stark himself has hosted. He has a noted soft spot for children, immigrants, refugees, veterans and the homeless, all of which are causes that anyone could see the light in pursuing. Stark has the corner on green energy, making phones available for lower class neighborhoods and taking out loan sharks. Well, the loan sharks are mostly handled by the Iron Man, but everyone knows that he only follows Stark’s orders, no one else’s. 

Tony Stark is a complex man that Bucky may very well have lots of fun with. 

The elevator is silent as it opens onto Stark’s residential floor, but the man himself turns around anyway, flashing the lot of them a smile that looks just as ready for the press as it is for pleasant company. Bucky steps out of the elevator last, allowing Maria to lead the way, Clint to follow her as he always does, and Sam and Steve to file out together. Everyone does their introductions, shaking Stark’s hand, before it’s Bucky’s turn. Stark has very soft eyes, a gentle smile, and perhaps he is even more complex than Bucky originally theorized. He shakes Stark’s hand. 

“Bucky Barnes, guide to flirtation,” he introduces, giving Stark a wink and grinning when he laughs. 

“Tony Stark, guide to misconduct. Nice to meet you, Snowflake,” Tony returns, releasing Bucky’s hand. Bucky raises an eyebrow, but Tony just laughs. “Cold hands, Buckaboo,” he explains, moving on immediately even when Bucky is just left staring after him. He hadn’t realised he had grabbed Stark’s hand with his metal one. Clint bumps him in the good shoulder, helping him move along. He slips his good hand into Clint’s, something the other sniper always takes into stride; they’re all for physical comforts on the team, and everyone knows that one of Bucky’s is holding hands. 

“So, which one of you needs me first? There’s enough to go around,” Tony announces once they’re sitting in his living room, him on an ottoman in the center of everything. He catches Bucky’s eye when he winks, to which Bucky cuts a grin of his own. Clint took back his hand when they sat down, but he’s thigh-to-thigh with Stevie now, so he’s mostly fine. Sam raises a hand to take him first, getting Stark to guide Sam to his bedroom. Their personality guru always needs to see a space in which a person lives; Bucky thinks that he would honestly be better off looking at wherever Tony spends his time inventing. Seems like he would spend a fuck of a lot more time there. 

Maria is making notes on the tablet that she brings everywhere, probably jotting things down about everything from Stark’s linguistic patterns to the socks he’s wearing, but it’s not any of Bucky’s business. He doesn’t handle the analysis part of the matchup, just teaches some basic personal skills and the importance of openness and intimacy. It helps that he took some psychology classes after he came home from his second tour one arm down and still getting his shit together. He had to have something to do while the rest of them were waiting to come home from war. 

“So, who’s next?” Tony asks as he reenters the room. Sam gives double thumbs up behind Stark’s back, to which Clint nods and stands out of his seat. He crosses the room and puts an arm around Tony’s shoulders, guiding him to the kitchen. 

“So, what do you know about cooking?” 

Bucky gets up from his seat and starts perusing Tony’s selection of books, following the bookcases lining the living room down the hallway, where they continue. He has a lot of priceless first editions, some romantics and some not, but he has a surprisingly large amount of Louisa May Alcott. Not only  _ Little Women,  _ but  _ Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Eight Cousins  _ and  _ Rose in Bloom,  _ among others. So, he’s a well-read feminist to start. He has a more modern selection that includes all seven of the  _ Harry Potter  _ books, a multitude of  _ Nancy Drew  _ and a smattering of children’s books that are hardly familiar to Bucky as they definitely came out in the time between Bucky’s childhood and now. Which makes Bucky wonder why Tony Stark owns them, being as the billionaire is definitely older than he is. 

_ Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance,  _ a book of medium thickness with a blue binding, stands out to Bucky, making him pluck it from the shelf immediately to the left of a bedroom door, which assumably belongs to Tony. He turns mindlessly to page 97, upon which a poem by Gaspara Stampa is inscribed in the original Italian. It’s a poem about death, a poem about life, and it’s very beautiful. 

“That’s one of my favorites,” Tony says, nearly startling Bucky out of his skin and making him drop the book. Instead, the former soldier closes the book slowly, putting it back onto the shelf with care. Tony gives him a charmed smile before doing something that Bucky thinks would put anyone out of sorts: he grabs Bucky’s metal hand, turning it over in his hand and examining it. 

“What are you doing?” Bucky asks, not angry, just really fucking confused. Tony seems to realise what he’s doing and drops it immediately, scrubbing a hand down his face. He gives Bucky a self-deprecating smile. 

“Being sleep deprived and bad at social interaction? Is your arm Starktech?” Tony asks. Bucky nods belatedly, still staring openly at Tony. 

“It is,” Bucky confirms aloud. Tony’s smile breaks into something real. 

“Neat!” he says, turning on his heel and walking back into the living room. Bucky feels about like he’s going to explode. 

“Barnes! Let me borrow you for a second - I want to teach Tony how to make Fritto Misto and you’re better at explaining how octopi - octopuses? octopods? - work,” Clint beckons Bucky over with wiggling fingers that always make Bucky smile. He follows into the kitchen without resistance and starts going over the details of octopodes - which is one of the correct terminologies, followed by octopuses - and getting the situation out of his mind. 

Which doesn’t last very long. 

Tony Stark continues to borderline flirt with him, always very detached and easy with a sly grin that makes Bucky slightly uncomfortable with how cute he finds it, but never with any degree of severity. The first day always belongs to Clint and Sam (and, in the background, Natasha and Maria running statistics on who the actual match should be), so Bucky doesn’t have to do any teaching at this juncture. 

When they leave, it feels like he’s leaving something behind. He ignores the feeling with extreme prejudice. 

Second day is for him, so he has to get ready for that. He has to think about intimacy, flirtation, separation of self, the way that Tony flirts around himself like he’s not a particularly important party in his own personal relationships. He considers somehow attempting to contact JARVIS to get more data on the subject, but the AI would likely be forced to give that request to Tony, which would kinda defeat the purpose. Bucky builds a mental model in his head with just the data he has, building upon it by watching videos of Tony from the massive amount of interviews that Tony has done in his life. He makes sure to include Tony from both before and after Afghanistan, but with a special focus on the after. They’re matchmaking the Tony of after, after all. 

When he begins to teach Tony, he begins with the fact that Tony is good at flirtation in the first place. 

“You’re a flirt, and that’s okay, but you’re… you’re very roundabout in the way you flirt with people you actually care about,” Bucky starts, to which he receives a raised eyebrow. He coughs. 

“I like to think I’m very direct about what I want, Snowflake,” Tony says with a flirtatious, lascivious grin. Bucky wrinkles his nose. 

"You separate yourself from what you're saying when you're flirting," he explains badly. Tony, unsurprisingly, just raises an eyebrow again. "What I mean to say is that you make everything about the other person. Not about what you want, not about what you like, even, and while it's smooth, it's not inviting. It doesn't give the impression that you're looking for something more, or deeper, or that you're willing to give some part of yourself to a relationship," he tries again, keeping his gestures close to himself just in case. In any case, Tony looks poleaxed, as if Bucky has said something to him that he never could have expected to hear. 

"I don't think I know how to give some part of myself away without giving everything away," Tony admits in a quiet voice. There isn't much to say to that.

Bucky gives him tips by flirting with Tony himself, but Tony doesn’t take any of it seriously. He just does what he usually does: press smiles and lascivious grins, interview answers and canned responses. There’s nothing genuine to it. As much as Bucky tries to push and get back a pull, Tony does give an inch. It’s impossible. It’s empty, it’s awful, it’s so fucking  _ sad.  _ It’s obvious that Tony has been doing this for much longer than should be expected of any young man, but it must seem perfectly regular for the Stark. By the time that Bucky’s time with him is over, he’s no closer to prying a genuine response from the other man, nor any closer to Tony realising that Bucky might actually be serious about wanting to flirt with him. 

The team meets in the apartment they pay for with team funds after the second day; they usually just give it a preliminary two days before they start the actual matchmaking process, and now is when they start. Except, everyone with eyes knows that Bucky is a little more invested in this one than he should be. 

“He’s impossible to flirt with, so he has to die,” Bucky says into the couch pillow. Clint pats him on the back, but Steve is completely unsympathetic, slapping him in the back of the head. 

“You’re not supposed to be flirting with him anyway, shithead,” Steve admonishes, rolling his eyes so loud that Bucky can fucking hear it. Or maybe they’ve just been friends for too long. 

“I mean, it would technically count as finding him a romance,” Maria chimes in, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen. Bucky flips her the bird and groans into the couch pillow, not wanting to be a person anymore. Natasha openly laughs at him before climbing onto his back, sitting criss cross on the junction between his lower back and his ass. Sam coaxes Bucky’s head upward, lifting his upper body up just enough to sit under him and tuck Bucky onto his lap. Bucky snuggles into the thick, muscled thighs, not even worried about the fact that both Sam’s boyfriend and his girlfriend are in the room. 

“So, who are we going to set him up with? I’m pretty sure that Potts has been flirting with me, Rhodes has a thing for Sam, and the good doctor Banner has been spotted with a romantic interest,” Natasha reports, messing with the hem of Bucky’s shirt with her fingertips. It’s never been weirder that Nat and Steve and Sam have an open relationship. 

“I’m still saying we should send Bucky in. One, we’re kinda short on other options. Two, it feels kinda shitty to send anyone else when we know how Bucky feels. Three, I kinda wanna see it crash and burn even if it doesn’t work out,” Sam says, giving a shrug that Bucky can feel. Bucky punches him before getting up, letting Natasha slide off of his back and onto the couch, which she takes gracefully. 

“Not helping, Sam,” Steve says, breathing out through his nose. “Are you ready for a date, most of all with a client, Buck?” Bucky closes his eyes for a moment, pacing the team apartment living room by memory. 

“I could be?” he says unconvincingly, biting his lip. Natasha stands, putting her hands on his shoulders. She’s a good four inches shorter than him, so it’s almost comical, but she still takes command of the situation sharply. 

“You either are or you aren’t, Barnes. Are you ready to be with another person in any capacity?” Natasha asks. Bucky swallows. 

“Isn’t this my job?” Sam asks Clint in the background, leaning from the couch to the armchair that Clint is in to stage whisper it. Natasha doesn’t even look away from Bucky to take a pen out of her pocket and throw it at Sam. The  _ fucking ow  _ that Sam whispers is comical, but Bucky is too distracted to even appreciate it. 

“I think I am. I don’t know,” Bucky admits, looking away from Nat’s face and onto the floor. He hears Sam sigh and stand up, and watches as the other man lightly pushes Natasha out of the way. 

“You’ve gotten so much better since you came back. Do you want to invite another person into your headspace? Do you want that person to be Tony?” Sam asks him simply, not touching Bucky, but grounding him with a steady voice instead. Bucky sighs, closing his eyes for a second before steeling himself.

“Yes,” he replies finally, and the rest of the team gets to work. 

Clint is rearranging things on his food related time table, Sam is pulling up resources on dating an army vet, Maria is doing something on her tablet, Natasha is calling Rhodey, and Steve is trying to make sure that no one loses their goddamn mind. Bucky is sitting against a wall with his ass firmly planted on the ground and his head between his knees because he hasn’t gone out on a date in nearly ten goddamn years. 

He’s a smooth flirt, but he’s only good at teaching other people how to do it, you dig? 

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Clint says eventually, sliding down the wall next to him while everyone else is still flying around the apartment doing various bullshit. Bucky nods steadily, and he loves Clint a lot because the other sniper just lets that be that, no more questions asked. 

The morning is difficult. He wakes with Clint wrapped around his back, Maria curled into his front; all of his friends let him go to sleep in their bed sometimes, and laying with Clint and Maria feels embarrassingly like sleeping between your mom and dad when you have a nightmare. It’s just  _ comforting.  _ Clint’s nose behind his ear and Maria’s breathing against his neck have him at ease in a way that being alone never does, and he doesn’t really want to get up. He lays there for around ten minutes before Maria is up like a shot, going from sleeping directly to completely awake. Only Clint and Steve really have a sleepy state anymore; the rest of them had it bred out. 

“Come on, Buckaboo. Up and attem,” Clint says a few minutes later, forehead against the top of Bucky’s spine as he tries to curl out of existence. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want his heat source to leave for the way that his hand is still curled around Bucky’s hip, but Bucky gets up anyway, chuckling. 

“You too, Hawkeye. Up and attem,” he says, putting his hands under the edge of the mattress and threatening to flip it by picking up the edge. Clint scrambles out of bed hard enough to knock his knee against the bedside table, making him curse a blue streak and fall to the floor. Bucky cackles as he crosses the room, helping Clint up even while Bucky is still laughing. 

“You’re the worst,” Clint mutters, but he comes to the kitchen with Bucky anyway. 

They prepare for the day like they prepare for any date day, except that Natasha and Maria are talking to Bucky instead of the date. Well, actually, except that Bucky is the date instead of some stranger. Clint goes to help Tony finish up the dinner when the time comes and then Bucky is expected to go to Tony’s penthouse like this isn’t a fucking horrible idea that he’s going with anyway because he doesn’t know the last time he’s wanted something this bad. He let Natasha talk him through date etiquette like he’s fourteen years old and going to McDonalds with a girl for the first time, but it’s fine. He’s wearing a button-up that probably fit him better when he had two arms, but it’s fine. 

“Bucky? I thought my date was coming now,” Tony says when Bucky gets out of the elevator, his eyebrows making quick acquaintances of his hairline. Bucky snorts something self deprecating and nods, giving Tony a sardonic smile. 

“Yeah. That’s me,” Bucky says, shrugging a shoulder. He watches as Tony seems to realise what he means, confusion moving to surprise moving to realisation moving to… happiness? Tony breaks into a grin and pulls Bucky into the kitchen by the hand, lacing their fingers in a way that makes a thousand butterflies burst from cocoons Bucky wasn’t aware he was housing in his stomach. 

“So, we’re eating Fritto Misto, which you know,” Tony says excitedly, sounding like a little buzzing bee in a way that makes Bucky want to hold him close. Instead, he pauses, pulling on Tony’s hand lightly and furrowing his brow. 

“You’re okay with this?” he asks to make sure, cripplingly unsure of himself and worried about how Tony is taking this. Tony gives him a smile that shines, a smile that is nothing like the press smile Bucky has been on the receiving end of before tonight. 

“More than okay with it, Buckaboo. Kinda the outcome I’ve been hoping for the whole time,” Tony says, small and charming and beautiful. Bucky gives him a smile of his own and squeezes his hand. 

They’ll be alright. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comment!


End file.
